I FOUND Michael Fry’s article very interesting (Why this high-flying Scot’s new book has made him the talk of Washington, September 8). I do not often find his comments on economics interesting, particularly when he repeats the nonsense that equality undermines efficiency. However in his praise of Mark Blyth’s book he makes some interesting points which are of economic significance.
The first of these is his recognition that the use of the term “economics” to what was traditionally called “political economy” was not just a changing of the name of the subject but was a narrowing of the concept to exclude other important social aspects of it.
READ MORE: Why this high-flying Scot’s new book has made him the talk of Washington
From this he makes reference to the present neo-liberal development of economics, which is a further narrowing in the same direction. This leads him to a book by Blyth and Lonergan, Angrynomics, which deals with the current despair in the higher echelons of neoliberal society not only about obvious rogue dealers, but more significantly about the system’s inability to deal with inherent problems that are bringing it to its knees.
It is interesting that Michael should recognise this and understand that the standard solution to its major problem, ie “austerity”, does not work and will not be available.
I have not yet read this book, but I suspect like Mervyn King’s book on the financial crisis, End of Alchemy, we will get a detailed description, heavily camouflaged by technical terms, which find the cause but offer no solutions.
What Michael might reflect on is that the neoliberal project is an extension of the narrowing process reducing everything to mathematical projections, and the basic weakness of the system is that while the productive force of capitalism is being stimulated, the distribution system in being suppressed. Put in economic terms this means there is a long-term lack of effective demand. Put in human terms it means there is too much inequality in the system, choking it.
Since Michael sees the need for the work professor Blyth is doing, he obviously recognises that the neoliberal system is on the point of collapse. Could Michael not tell Andrew Wilson, and advise him to abandon his faith in sterling which is, after all, likely to sink with the neoliberal system?
Andy Anderson
Saltcoats
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